Booked & Boarded: Perth — The Waterways of Home

The bell above the door at New Edition Bookshop sounded exactly as I remembered.

Outside, Fremantle was already warming into another bright afternoon. Norfolk pines stood against a cloudless sky and a sea breeze drifted inland from the harbour, carrying the smell of salt through the open doorway whenever someone stepped inside. I wandered between the shelves without much intention, pulling books down, reading first pages, then sliding them back into place. There was no urgency to any of it. The afternoon stretched ahead, and Fremantle had always been a place where entire days could disappear without feeling wasted.

Growing up in the outer suburbs of Perth, I spent as much time in Fremantle as I could. Sometimes there was a reason for the trip. More often there wasn’t. The attraction was not any particular destination but the freedom of stepping off the train with a whole day to fill. I drifted between New Edition and Elizabeth’s Secondhand Books, where the shelves seemed to extend endlessly through crowded rooms and narrow aisles. At some point I would usually end up at Gino’s, lingering over a bowl of pasta while watching people move through the streets outside. The rhythm rarely changed. A bookstore, a coffee, another bookstore, a walk towards the waterfront. Looking back, those afternoons feel impossibly unstructured, but perhaps that was their appeal. Nothing was scheduled. Nothing needed to be achieved. Complete freedom and independence. 

Most days eventually led me uphill to the Roundhouse.

The wind there never made reading easy. It came hard off the Indian Ocean, lifting pages and tugging at the corners of paperbacks. Below the cliffs, waves folded themselves against the rocks. Beyond them, ships waited offshore, suspended between departure and arrival. I would find a place on the grass with a book open on my knees and spend hours moving between the page and the horizon. Some afternoons I read intently. Other afternoons I found myself watching the water instead, distracted by the movement of ships entering the harbour or the changing colour of the ocean as the light shifted across it.

What I remember most clearly is not any particular book but the feeling of sitting there. Behind me stood the old stone walls of the Roundhouse. Ahead stretched open water. Fremantle unfolded below. The city felt close enough to reach and distant enough to escape. Years later, whenever I think about Perth, it is often this scene that returns first.

Only after leaving Perth did I realise how much of my life there had been shaped by water. The river threaded quietly through the city, the ocean pulled me west, and countless afternoons seemed to end beside one shoreline or another.

The Swan River was always there, widening and narrowing through the city, appearing unexpectedly beyond roads and suburban streets. As a child, it seemed less like a landmark than a permanent feature of the landscape, something as ordinary as traffic lights or shopping centres. It was only after leaving Perth that I realised how often it appeared in memory. I remember afternoon light turning the water silver near South Perth and ferries crossing steadily between the foreshore and the city. I remember black swans gliding close to the shoreline and rowing crews cutting across the river at first light. The river never demanded attention, but it shaped the character of the city all the same. It moved at its own pace and, in many ways, Perth seemed to move with it.

Beyond Fremantle, ferries sped across to the playground of Rottnest Island. The island emerged from the horizon, a low strip of limestone and scrub surrounded by water so clear it barely looked real. Entire days disappeared there. We rode bikes between beaches, swam at The Basin, followed roads out to the lighthouses and stopped beside the pink lakes that looked almost artificial beneath the summer sun. Even now, when I think of Rottnest, I remember the feeling of arriving more than any single place on the island itself: stepping off the ferry and entering a landscape governed by bicycles, beaches and the weather.

If Fremantle belonged to wandering, Cottesloe belonged to lingering.

Like most Perth teenagers, I spent countless Sundays there. The grass above the beach filled early with groups of friends, families and regulars who seemed to return to the same patch week after week. Towels spread across the lawn. Conversations drifted between groups. People wandered down to the water and back again. The hours moved slowly, marked only by the changing angle of the sun and the strengthening afternoon sea breeze.

As evening approached, the mood shifted almost imperceptibly. Swimmers lingered in the shallows. Shadows stretched across the grass. The ocean darkened from turquoise to deep blue. Then, as if following an unspoken instruction, everyone turned towards the horizon. Watching the sun sink into the Indian Ocean was never treated as an event in Perth. It was simply part of the rhythm of the day, a ritual repeated so often that nobody thought to question it.

Years later, after work, I found myself returning to the same beach for different reasons. On evenings when the day felt particularly long, I would pull over on the drive home and walk down to the sand just in time for sunset. Teenagers occupied the same stretches of grass we once claimed for ourselves. Families unpacked fish and chips. Surfers waited beyond the break for one final wave. The beach remained familiar even as life around it changed, and there was something reassuring about standing in a place that seemed largely indifferent to the passing of time.

The same relationship with the coast shaped our Christmases. Every year, families arrived at whichever beach could accommodate them, unloading umbrellas, folding chairs, eskies and portable shade structures from the backs of cars. Prime positions were claimed early. Children disappeared into the water and emerged only when hunger forced them back to shore. Entire days unfolded beneath canvas and shade, punctuated by cricket games, swims and trips back and forth between the ocean and the picnic area. The individual beaches blur together now, but the feeling of measuring summer by sunlight, tides and the distance between shade and the shoreline remains. 

Perth today is a different city from the one I grew up in. Northbridge laneways that once felt forgotten now glow with small bars and cafés. Rooftops fill with people gathering to watch the sun set across the skyline. On some evenings I find myself eating dinner at Billy Lee’s before wandering streets that would have looked very different when I was younger. The city has grown taller, busier and more confident in itself, but these changes rarely dominate my memories of Perth.

Looking back, I thought I was simply filling time. Catching trains to Fremantle. Browsing bookshops. Reading beside the ocean. Wandering without much purpose through a city that felt endlessly familiar. Years later, those afternoons seem to contain the beginnings of something else. Not a desire to travel exactly, but a way of paying attention. A habit of following curiosity wherever it happened to lead and allowing a day to unfold without rushing it towards a conclusion.

Whenever I think of Perth now, I find myself back at the Roundhouse. The wind is coming hard off the Indian Ocean. A secondhand paperback rests open on my knees. Below the cliffs, the water moves steadily against the rocks. Somewhere behind me is the train station, the bookshops and the city itself, but for the moment none of it feels particularly urgent. There is still enough daylight left for another chapter.